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Estimations are more important in large orgs with competiting priorities. (Or when you're going to be billing a client and they want to know, in an external-fac

Estimations are more important in large orgs with competiting priorities. (Or when you're going to be billing a client and they want to know, in an external-facing team like that.) If you have a straight list of priorities it's not going to change how hard the project is or anything; you'll discover some stuff earlier that will help you project when to expect it, probably, but the work needed is still the work needed. But if you have one VP who wants to do A and one who wants to do B and the higher-ups want to know how much they'll both cost in order to decide which to do first... then yeah, you need an estimate, but you also ideally need to make it clear that those estimates are going to take time and are going to take resources away from other work.

kqr 4y ago
> But if you have one VP who wants to do A and one who wants to do B and the higher-ups want to know how much they'll both cost in order to decide which to do first... Assuming that all efforts bring about the same value and it's only the cost that is different is a huge (but very common) mistake. It's the other way around. Any time you're comparing two options they're likely to cost approximately the same, but it's likely one is wildly more valuable than the other. That is the thing that needs to be estimated.
- majormajor 4y ago
  I haven't seen an assumption of the same value, and didn't say that assumption was necessary - the decision-maker wants those value estimates too. Same basic principal - if value is X vs 3X but effort is Y vs 10Y... that's good to know. "Likely to cost approximately the same" has been very atypical in my experience. Hopefully that estimation is done even in the "straight line, not-parallel priorities, no cost estimation needed" scenario!
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
Under no circumstances do the software estimations for major competing projects in any way affect the political decision. Even if the teams themselves sweat blood on the estimations, the politicians will get their own people to do their own opinions and argue with those. The decisions are all a compromise between peers horse trading budgets.

kqr 4y ago

> But if you have one VP who wants to do A and one who wants to do B and the higher-ups want to know how much they'll both cost in order to decide which to do first... Assuming that all efforts bring about the same value and it's only the cost that is different is a huge (but very common) mistake. It's the other way around. Any time you're comparing two options they're likely to cost approximately the same, but it's likely one is wildly more valuable than the other. That is the thing that needs to be estimated.

majormajor 4y ago
I haven't seen an assumption of the same value, and didn't say that assumption was necessary - the decision-maker wants those value estimates too. Same basic principal - if value is X vs 3X but effort is Y vs 10Y... that's good to know. "Likely to cost approximately the same" has been very atypical in my experience. Hopefully that estimation is done even in the "straight line, not-parallel priorities, no cost estimation needed" scenario!

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

Under no circumstances do the software estimations for major competing projects in any way affect the political decision. Even if the teams themselves sweat blood on the estimations, the politicians will get their own people to do their own opinions and argue with those. The decisions are all a compromise between peers horse trading budgets.